Junta chief Min Aung Hlaing was in his office in Naypyitaw when the powerful 7.7 magnitude earthquake struck central Myanmar last Friday.
“I took half the table” to protect himself, he recalled at a junta-organized donation event for earthquake victims four days later.
“Then my security team suggested going outside, so I went and stood outside for about an hour,” he added.
That restful hour for the junta boss turned Myanmar’s second-largest city Mandalay and Sagaing into hell, killing and wounding people and trapping hundreds beneath the rubble.
The earthquake also caused widespread destruction in Naypyitaw Union Territory, which is under the direct authority of Min Aung Hlaing. According to locals, it damaged government buildings, roads, bridges, employee housing, hospitals, hotels, dams, apartments, and other official facilities, resulting in hundreds of casualties.
The official death toll for the whole of the country keeps rising, reaching 3,145 as of Thursday evening.
The regime initially refused to disclose the scale of damage in Naypyitaw, but the junta boss, during a visit to Parliament the same day, publicly admitted that it was massive. On Friday, one week after the quake, the junta announced that Naypyitaw had the second highest death toll with 511 after Mandalay’s 2,053.
Government offices in the capital sustained significant damage.
During an emergency meeting of ASEAN foreign ministers on Sunday, the Foreign Ministry published a photo of chief diplomat Than Swe sitting outside his damaged office, which showed parts shearing off from ministry buildings.
Other photos published by the ministry show officials receiving the Chinese ambassador and a World Food Programme delegation in a makeshift tent in the ministry compound.
The National Disaster Management Committee, the highest-level body responsible, lost its office in the earthquake, forcing it to hold meetings in a tent in the grounds of the Ministry of Social Welfare, Relief, and Resettlement.
There are reports that the area known as the Row of Six Mansions—the Naypyitaw residences of military bigwigs including former dictator Than Shwe, his deputy Maung Aye, former president Thein Sein, and former Union Election Commission chair Tin Aye—also sustained damage.
“The Row of Six Mansions was also affected, but only ceilings, pillars, and porticoes were damaged,” a minister’s personal staffer told The Irrawaddy. “There were no reports of casualties.”
The Irrawaddy could not independently verify the reports.
What is certain is that photos of the presidential palace shared on social media shortly after the quake show collapsed ceilings and walls and broken chandeliers.
Yin Yin Nwe, one of Min Aung Hlaing’s advisors, wrote on Facebook: “I had to take shelter under a big table. It was rough. Only when it calmed down a bit did I cautiously grab my laptop and run outside.”
The minister’s staffer said many buildings in the military’s war office were damaged.
“Many residential buildings and staff housing collapsed,” he said.
He estimated the death toll in Naypyitaw at around 400 to 450 given that approximately 250 bodies arrived at hospitals there last Friday and Saturday.
But even in elite enclaves the junta failed to carry out any effective rescue and relief operations, leaving civil servants and their families buried under the collapsed Khayay Housing Complex and other staff housing in Zabuthiri Township.
A government employee said teams of junta officials did visit the collapsed sites, but without doing anything to help.
